Sore Must Be The Storm
by unbeldi
Summary: "And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm." After winning the 73rd Hunger Games, Spock is unexpectedly thrust into the role of mentor for James Kirk, District Six's first volunteer in over a decade.
1. Chapter 1

"Did you see that? The kid just up and volunteered!"

"Hm."

"Not even his brother or anything – just some random kid. Probably twelve, judging by his skin-n'-bones figure. Or are you just all that way over in Six?"

"You are hardly one to talk about 'bones', McCoy."

"Don't you go laughing at me. I got that nickname because I won with every bone in my body broken."

"No. You won with three fractured ribs, one broken shin, a twisted ankle, and a compound fracture in your left forearm. The human body contains two hundred and six bones. I would hope an aspiring doctor remembered as much."

"Very funny, Spock."

The dark-haired man turned back to the projected image on the television, paused directly on the face of District Six's male tribute. Despite himself, Spock spared a glance towards it as well, curious to see the heroic idiot who volunteered. Eighteen. Blonde. Handsome enough, though evidently not very intelligent. Volunteers like him were always the first to die in the arena.

"If he is foolish enough to volunteer, it seems District Six will not have a Victor this year."

"How can you say that? Volunteering – for someone you don't even _know_ – that's just about the bravest thing you can do!"

"Bravery gets you nowhere in the Games."

"You're one jaded bastard, you know that?"

McCoy unpaused the screen, and the action resumed. The crowd in the district square began to buzz as the boy made his way up to the platform, looking for all the world like a smug hero. To his right stood a frail girl with dark red hair, and a bit behind them Six's escort – a green-skinned woman known as Gaila – clapped her hands like an excited child.

"Ladies and gentlemen! I give you your seventy-fourth District Six tributes: Marla McGivers and James Kirk!"

Spock looked back down at his book.

"So, what do you think?"

"I have no opinion. It does not concern me."

"Doesn't concern you? That's no way for a mentor to talk."

Spock raised a single eyebrow.

"I won my Games last year. As there is already a mentor for my district, I am absolved of responsibility for the current Games."

"…you haven't heard, then?"

He didn't put down his book, didn't even look up from it. But he could not force his brain to absorb the words on the page.

"Heard what?"

_I am not afraid. I am calm. If I am calm, they cannot hurt me._

"Pike shot himself this morning. They're keeping it quiet so as not to upset the citizens, but given that the only other Victor of yours is locked up in morphling rehab, you're next in line."

He could feel his heart begin to pound against his ribcage, and wisps of forcibly suppressed memories at the back of his mind flashed before his eyes, single frames of horrors best left unremembered.

A woman's sad smile as the desert canyon collapsed around her. The heat of lava scorching the soles of his feet as he clawed at the edge of a cliff. A taunting laugh. A mangled scream cut short.

_Ladies and gentlemen, I give you your Victor—_

The sound of tearing paper brought him back to reality. In his shaking hands was a scrap that used to be a page in his book. Looking up, he saw his older friend looking on in concern.

"You ok there, Spock?"

"Perfectly fine." As slowly as he could manage it, he put the page back inside and closed the book. Clutching the closed spine kept his hands from trembling so. "It was simply unexpected news."

"I'm – look, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been so blunt."

"There is nothing to apologize for. Pike was a troubled man. This development does not come entirely as a surprise when one examines his past behavior."

"Still, I know he was important to you. Hell, I'm still grateful for my mentor. He was an asshole and he's long dead, but he somehow got me out alive."

"A task that now falls to me, it would seem."

McCoy's face fell as he realized he struck yet another nerve.

"You don't have anything to worry about. Really. At the end of the day, it's not your fault if they die."

"It is their own fault, then?"

The grizzled man went very still for a few seconds, then fixed Spock with a deadly serious look.

"You know whose fault it is."

_He is correct. But it is futile to resist what cannot be changed._

The nineteen-year-old rose from his armchair, a District Ten relic that McCoy kept in his apartment to fight off homesickness.

"It is about time I get going. If what you have told me is correct, I must prepare to meet my tributes at the station as soon as they arrive."

"Spock, that won't be until morning. I thought you were staying—"

"Evidently, the situation has changed. It would be inappropriate to waste valuable preparation time here."

"God, I'm _sorry_, all right?"

Spock briefly turned from the doorframe to face his friend. McCoy was, without a doubt, one of the better adjusted Victors, but the Games had still taken their toll on his spirit. The man was no older than twenty-seven, yet his face bore many wrinkles, and his trademark cynical demeanor masked a desperate loneliness that few ever saw.

McCoy – 'Bones,' as the Capitol liked to call him – probably needed him to stay tonight, to help fight away the demons that always reared their heads on this dreaded anniversary.

But he had demons of his own to face, and two of them were named Marla McGivers and James Kirk.

"I must leave, McCoy. Thank you for your hospitality."

Spock walked out the door before the other Victor could get the last word.

The screens were everywhere. On the walls, in the windows, even projected on the back of the elevator. Though the walk from the District Ten rooms was not very long, Spock was bombarded with colors, faces, and Caesar Flickerman's brassy laughter. Every other word was 'Hunger Games', 'Reaping', 'Tribute.'

Curiously, he did not hear 'death' once.

_I am not angry. If I feel nothing, they do not own me._

"And that was District Two, arriving at Central Station!" Caesar smiled, his face zooming back into view after cutting away from footage of an arriving train. "Most of the tributes won't get here until morning, of course. But until then, why don't we take a look at the Reaping that has everyone talking? Hmm?"

He laughed again, and before Spock could look away, the familiar scene of the District Six square lit up the elevator's walls.

"I volunteer as tribute!"

The camera froze the face of the blonde boy once again, and a tag reading 'James Kirk, 18' appeared beneath him immediately.

"In a turn of events that _no one_ saw coming, District Six has its first volunteer in over ten years." Caesar seemed absolutely giddy, appearing in a side frame next to the video. "And what a volunteer he is! That hair alone has probably got sponsors lined up in the streets."

Claudius Templesmith, the more soft-spoken of the two, nodded his head. "I'm sure that boy's mentor is excited to have such a marketable tribute this year."

"Could District Six take home their first back-to-back win in the history of the Games?"

With a ding, the doors of the elevator slid open, and Spock tensed every muscle in his body.

_Not angry. Not anxious. Not afraid._

His deliberately slow steps echoed across the empty corridor as he made his way to his apartment. As steadily as he could, he swiped his key card across the digital lock.

In reality, the pressurized metal door opened with a hiss.

In his mind, a geyser of superheated steam blasted up in front of him, and two young bodies just a few feet from his eyes cried out as their flesh melted away.

Marla McGivers and James Kirk.

Spock screamed.


	2. Chapter 2

Abruptly, it was all gone. The heat, the smoke, the sickening smell of burnt hair – all of it, gone. In their place was a sharply cool breeze and a stinging pain in his hands. Odd.

Spock opened his bleary eyes to see the underside of his glass coffee table looming above him, riddled with cracks and faintly smeared with red. A strange situation to find himself in, but not one he was unfamiliar with. Still in the serene place between sleep and consciousness, he lifted up his right hand to gauge the damage.

A thin red line cut straight across his palm, surrounded by smaller scratches and tiny pieces of glass still stuck in his skin. He assumed his knuckles were in similar shape. The pain seemed the same, at least. Lowering his arm once more, Spock turned his head to the side and saw scattered glass shards mixed with broken pottery, some of the jagged edged stained with his blood.

He would have wondered what happened, but he already knew. Rampages like this often blindsided him when he was stressed. For now, he was just thankful that no one else got hurt.

As far as he knew.

The wind whistled by, high-pitched and cold, and he concluded that the window was partially broken as well. That would explain the sudden drop in temperature.

Speaking of which, Spock realized he was shivering.

Bundling his aching arms close to his chest and pulling his knees in, the young man shut his eyes again and took a few deep, slow breaths. Calm. Above all else, it was important he remained calm. None of the damage was permanent, the terrible visions had finally left him, and there was still a little bit of time left to gather his thoughts before—

"Wake up, sleepy head!" A fist pounded three times on the metal door. "You've already missed the train, let's not sleep through the entire Opening Ceremony."

Reality hit Spock like a bucket of ice water, and he felt his heart drop into his stomach as he scrambled to stand up. Tiny needles stabbed into his bare feet, exposed completely to the mess on the floor. Spock tried to keep his gait steady, but the full weight of his pain became clearer the longer he stayed upright, and he barely made it to the doorway before he stumbled and collapsed onto the wall for support.

Weakly, he pushed the button to open the door, and watched as McCoy's irritated face fell into shock, then worry.

"Good _God_, Spock," he said under his breath, almost to himself, "what did you do to yourself?"

"I'm fine," he lied, each word like an iron weight in his mind. "Why didn't you come get me sooner?"

"I assumed – incorrectly, I see – that you would get yourself up. It was only when I heard Gaila huffing and puffing around the Tribute Center about not having a mentor that I figured something was up."

Perfect. He'd already failed his first task as a mentor.

Exhaling through his nose to keep from groaning, Spock pushed himself completely onto his feet and steeled himself against the wave of dizziness that overtook him.

"I'll go change. Tell Gaila and the prep team I will be there as soon as possible."

"Oh no, you don't," McCoy pushed himself through the door and hit its button with his elbow, shutting it behind him. "You are not going anywhere in that condition, brainiac."

"The tributes—"

"To hell with the tributes!" Spock felt, rather than saw, the other man prop him up with his shoulder. Everything in the room was beginning to spin. "Gaila can wait a few goddamn minutes for her precious mentor."

His eyelids sank shut of their own accord, and he sensed that he was being led to the nearby bed. McCoy stopped for a split second after a few steps, and though he didn't make a sound, his muscles tensed noticeably under his arm.

_He's seen the damage, then._

Before he had too long to contemplate, Spock felt clean linen and an ultra-soft Capitol pillow against his back, and his body sank gratefully into its comfort.

"The Capitol will not be pleased," he mumbled, a part of him still protesting this forced bed rest.

"Well, if the Capitol is so desperate to have a punctual mentor," McCoy yelled over his shoulder, bottles of pills hitting the ground as he hastily rooted through the medicine cabinet, "maybe they shouldn't make one so miserable that he offs himself when they aren't looking."

"Pike…was a good man," Spock's pulse throbbed in his head, and he finally realized he had a horrifically bad headache on top of the rest of his injuries.

"Yes. He was," the man's voice got nearer again, and there was a messy clatter as he dropped various medical supplies on the bedside table. "Good men always fall the hardest."

Falling. He'd fallen once. Over the gaping mouth of an active volcano.

His breath sped up as he felt the heat roast the skin of his back.

"Whoa, now! Easy," McCoy put a steady hand on his shoulder, then placed the cool metal of a stethoscope over his palpitating heart. "You're getting yourself all worked up over nothing. The tributes are in the Remake Center for the rest of the day. There's plenty of time before that stupid parade."

Right, the Remake Center – all of them went there so they wouldn't track dirt into the gleaming streets of the Capitol. The specialists had all found him so _fascinating_ when they'd first seen him, whispering just outside of his hearing and tittering with laughter. After systematically removing every follicle of body hair he had, they'd injected something mysterious into his ears. It was until Spock casually looked in his mirror that he realized they were now extended and sharpened at the tip.

What liberties would these so-called doctors take with the tributes this year?

He was startled from his memory when McCoy pried his eyelids open and shone a blinding light into his face.

"Sorry. Had to check for a concussion," he clicked the light off, and Spock fell back into comfortable darkness, "which you have, by the way. God, Spock, I never took you for a drinker, but you messed yourself up pretty bad last night."

"I wasn't drunk," he said emphatically, though he was trying to regain control over his emotions now that the pain had subsided somewhat.

"Did someone attack you?"

"No." He'd seen enough of his apartment to know that there were no signs of a break-in, and Capitol security would never dream of letting someone hurt a mentor so close to the Games. "I was upset. There is nothing else to discuss."

"If you say so," McCoy hesitantly agreed, tapping on a glass syringe with his finger. "Now, this is going to sting a bit, but you'll thank me in a second."

"Morphling?"

"How'd you guess?" He answered flatly before sticking the needle into Spock's side. The younger man didn't even flinch. Compared with the rest of his wounds, a simple injection was hardly noticeable. "There you go. That'll make the stitches bearable, at least."

It was true: morphling was famous for acting quickly. Even now, he could feel a warm numbness spreading throughout his body, dulling the pain at last.

"I wasn't aware you'd gotten your medical license."

"I haven't," the man's typical gruff behavior had returned, it seemed, "the Capitol would never let a Victor become an actual doctor. But I'm just as skilled as anyone you'd find in District Ten, so don't worry about me poking anywhere I shouldn't."

"I wasn't worried," Spock could feel himself drifting off, pulled down by the drug and by his own fatigue, "I was simply curious."

"All right, 'simply curious.' It's time for you to get some rest." McCoy chuckled quietly.

It was the last sound he heard before he sank into a deep, much-needed sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

_The sun is shining down on a mild, beautiful day in District Six. There's not a cloud to mar the perfect blue sky, and the slightest breeze makes the grassy plains sway to and fro. It is the nicest weather they've had in months. It is Reaping Day._

_He stands penned up, crammed shoulder to shoulder against the other eighteen-year-olds. The district is not big enough to hold all of its citizens – it never has been. But the Capitol doesn't lift a finger to help. They're content to keep their workhorse in its crumbling stable._

_Meanwhile, his only home is a rotting mattress. He shares it with three other strangers._

_A green-skinned woman climbs up the steps, bedecked in jewels that make her shimmer in the sun. She scans the crowd with the widest, whitest smile he has ever seen, attempting to create happiness where there is none. How blissful her vapid, empty world must be._

_Wasting no time, she thrusts her hand into a comically oversized bowl filled to the brim with death sentences._

_"Spock Vulkan!"_

_He doesn't remember walking to the stage. He doesn't remember hearing the other victim. He doesn't remember the screams of his mother, because there are none._

_What he does remember is a set of two blue eyes, looking squarely at him from the crowd._

Here I am, _he says in his mind, staring at, accusing those sorrowful eyes, _if you want to be a hero, if you are so desperate to save someone, now's your chance. Volunteer. I dare you.

_The blue-eyed boy looks away, and a pair of strong arms pulls him inside the doors of the Justice Building._

_A second later, he is on a train, slowly creeping to a halt as a grey rain taps on his window. The factories and shipyards of District Six come back into view, and the green-skinned woman comes into his compartment with that vicious, gleaming smile._

_"We need to get going! You'll miss your official welcome home party!"_

_This isn't his home. Another stranger sleeps in his home now, under that leaky roof, on a crowded mattress. He is more homeless now than ever before._

_But he moves because a Peacekeeper with a shotgun appears like a specter in the doorway._

_Once again, he's on the platform. Once again, he looks over a sea of familiar faces with that same pity in their eyes._

_Except his. The eyes that had cut to his core and abandoned him that day a lifetime ago. They do not look at him with pity, guilt, or shame. He cannot see anything in them but the icy blue that burned itself into his mind._

Why?_ He demands, feeling his fury rise and boil over the emotionless façade he used as armor. _Why didn't you save me?

_The eyes, and the young man they belong to, simply soften with the ghost of a smile. He doesn't say a word, but the pride and admiration that light up his face give Spock his answer._

-because I didn't have to.


End file.
